Petroglyphs
which were around the Three Maidens in Pipestonewritten by Gloria Hazell

These
are some of the Petroglyphs removed by Charles Bennett
from the Three Maidens area. A few of the slabs are
now located in the National Monument building. The
above photo is of one of the slabs showing two petroglyphs.
I (Gloria) put my foot in the picture to show the
size of the pecking. This looks like a deer and an
arrow.

Below
is the alien looking figure, it has five fingers but
really strange ears, it is noticable that the figures
that look more human only have three fingers.

I
have manipulated the pictures below to bring
the engraving out more. These are from the
old Bennett picture from 1890's

I find the next one the most
interesting, it is hard to see in this picture
but the human like figure which again has
strange ears, is holding a woman's pipe, in
his hand. To me this one and the one under
it which shows a humanoid figure holding a
Plains or T Pipe, shows that the Pipe had
to have been used in this area for many centuries
or why would it have been on a petroglyph
which was probably put there thousands of
years ago. This design can be seen clearer
on the picture below when Chas. Bennett showed
the collection.

deer
with antlers

The
Elbow Pipe man.

dragonfly and humanoid

T Pipe man

Bird
tracks and deer

bird
track

Photo
from Calender published by the Pipestone Historical Society.

This
is the photograph of Charles Bennett with all of the Petroglyphs
he had removed. He had them on show and took them to places
like State Fairs and in actual fact won an award at one
of them.

By
the time Bennett died many of the pieces had been lost.
They were never found and there has been much speculation
about where they had gone.

Incidently
Chuck discovered a group of Petroglyphs on the Monument
grounds, in 1992, (not near the Three Maidens,) which was
named the 'Derby' Petroglyph. We are trying to get a good
photo of the group to put on this page. We do have a
newspaper article about them in the Museum in the Center.